Bdftopcf
is a font compiler for the X server and font server. Fonts in Portable Compiled
Format can be read by any architecture, although the file is structured
to allow one particular architecture to read them directly without reformatting.
This allows fast reading on the appropriate machine, but the files are
still portable (but read more slowly) on other machines.

Sets
the font glyph padding. Each glyph in the font will have each scanline
padded in to a multiple of n bytes, where n is 1, 2, 4 or 8.

-un

Sets the
font scanline unit. When the font bit order is different from the font
byte order, the scanline unit n describes what unit of data (in bytes)
are to be swapped; the unit i can be 1, 2 or 4 bytes.

-m

Sets the font bit
order to MSB (most significant bit) first. Bits for each glyph will be
placed in this order; i.e., the left most bit on the screen will be in the
highest valued bit in each unit.

-l

Sets the font bit order to LSB (least
significant bit) first. The left most bit on the screen will be in the
lowest valued bit in each unit.

-M

Sets the font byte order to MSB first.
All multi-byte data in the file (metrics, bitmaps and everything else)
will be written most significant byte first.

-L

Sets the font byte order
to LSB first. All multi-byte data in the file (metrics, bitmaps and everything
else) will be written least significant byte first.

-t

When this option is
specified, bdftopcf will convert fonts into "terminal" fonts when possible.
A terminal font has each glyph image padded to the same size; the X server
can usually render these types of fonts more quickly.

-i

This option inhibits
the normal computation of ink metrics. When a font has glyph images which
do not fill the bitmap image (i.e., the "on" pixels don't extend to the edges
of the metrics) bdftopcf computes the actual ink metrics and places them
in the .pcf file; the -t option inhibits this behaviour.

-o output-file-name

By default bdftopcf writes the pcf file to standard output; this option
gives the name of a file to be used instead.